The Official Rackspace Blog » Cloud Siteshttp://www.rackspace.com/blog
Learn more about the #1 Managed Cloud company. Read recent and most popular posts on subjects like the cloud, our customers and partners, our products and the famous Rackspace culture.Fri, 31 Jul 2015 20:29:11 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.5CloudU Adds WordPress Learning Series To 2015 Course Lineuphttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloudu-adds-wordpress-learning-series-to-2015-course-lineup/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloudu-adds-wordpress-learning-series-to-2015-course-lineup/#commentsWed, 07 Jan 2015 15:07:54 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=37665The cloud is another year older but ambiguity still lingers around what the cloud actually is and what it does. Built-in-the-cloud companies like Facebook, Netflix and Dropbox have popularized massively scalable and shareable applications that are easy to navigate and consume. They’ve created the gold standard for accessing software and growing a business on the cloud.

But how do newcomers to the cloud obtain the right skills to aim in that direction? The challenges and barriers to becoming a cloud expert are often unique to each generation of IT worker. Tech-savvy millennials—those with their whole careers ahead of them—may find rigorous cloud computing classes and degrees hard to find. Many Gen X-ers working as IT professionals find themselves working with proprietary software and legacy systems that will be the last to evolve to a cloud-based solution. Meanwhile, Boomers looking to extend their careers in IT are often hesitant about investing time and money for online or classroom-based training.

CloudU is launching a series of learning programs in 2015 aimed at making the cloud more accessible and easier to understand, no matter where you’re at in your IT career. The learning series is designed to reduce the ambiguity about the role of the cloud in a rapidly evolving IT industry. It gives you a foot in the cloudy door.

The first learning series will focus on installing, designing and implementing a fully functional WordPress site hosted on Cloud Sites, a Rackspace offering that features a five-minute deployment. Similar to the Managed Cloud offering Rackspace is known for, the Cloud Sites deployment allows you to focus on learning WordPress and not worry about configuring and maintaining the IT infrastructure running below it.

If you’re not familiar with WordPress, it’s a free, open-source content management system (CMS) used by many top companies like Best Buy, GM and Samsung. It’s also known for its ease of use and very active global community. Combining these features with the One-Click WordPress Install on Cloud Sites offering is a great fit for CloudU students and graduates.

The Cloud Sites sandbox is a special feature of this learning series. Learners will be able to create a free 30-day Cloud Sites trial account to use as they progress through the learning series at their own pace. In addition to learning how to install and design a WordPress site, learners will have access to business insights on project management, working with clients, search engine optimization (SEO) and WordPress best practices from industry leaders.

Keeping with the crowdsourcing model used to develop all CloudU content, this learning series came out of ongoing collaboration with some of the industry’s top WordPress designers and agencies, including The WordPress Guy at Rackspace, webTegrity, KiloThought Media and humanmade.

Whether you’re storing pictures, videos or static HTML pages, the Cloud Files cloud storage system is perfect for storing website files. By default, Cloud Files maintains three copies of each file you store, ensuring high data durability. Plus, you can use the Cloud Files open source API to communicate with the storage system, making it easy to write applications that use Cloud Files.

Within Cloud Files, you’re not just throwing your content at a storage product. Rather, you have options to meet your specific needs as a Cloud Sites customer. You have access to third-party tools that work with Cloud Files; a Rackspace Cloud Mobile application that makes it incredibly convenient to administer your Cloud Files anywhere and everywhere; and the Cloud Files API, which targets the open source and fully supported tools for Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP and .Net.

For Cloud Sites customers, Cloud Files is the most logical solution for storing content for your websites. Other content storage platforms can create speed bumps and can make the process to set up containers difficult. With Cloud Sites on Cloud Files, setting up containers to store static content is a simple process.

Because both Cloud Sites and Cloud Files are part of the Rackspace Managed Cloud, using the two products together is hassle-free. Since you are essentially moving content from one Rackspace product to another, the process is far more manageable, especially with plugins similar to the one mentioned above. Typically, customers use a cname pointing to their Cloud Files container. It is recommended that you mirror your folder structure on the Cloud Files container and do a find and replace for their links to append the cname they have established. For example: Find /wp-content/uploads/ then replace cname.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/. This also opens you up to become more modular without the stress of having to migrate your content information.

To top everything off, Cloud Files is a cost efficient way to store your Cloud Sites content. There are no confusing pricing variables or extra charges for support. It’s the most efficient and functional way to have your Cloud Sites-managed website backed up by Rackspace Cloud Files.

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/why-cloud-sites-and-cloud-files-are-the-perfect-complement/feed/0Cloud Sites Helps infoplum – AFP Handle Billions Of FIFA World Cup Web Requestshttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloud-sites-helps-infoplum-afp-handle-billions-of-fifa-world-cup-web-requests/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloud-sites-helps-infoplum-afp-handle-billions-of-fifa-world-cup-web-requests/#commentsThu, 04 Sep 2014 19:00:03 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=36632The 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament took the world by storm. Diehard soccer fans and newbies alike kept an eye on the matches day-in and day-out, at work and at home. The soccer-hungry audience searched for real time updates throughout the month-long tournament. They needed to know what happened on the pitch, and they wanted that info immediately.

Chances are you if you were looking for up-to-date futbol data you went to a site embedded with an infoplum – AFP responsive HTML5 application. A real time application by infoplum – AFP provided updates on scores, highlights, news, pictures, advanced statistics, profiles, predictive data and even 3D footage of goals – exactly what the sports world collectively craved throughout the World Cup. And infoplum – AFP relied on Rackspace Cloud Sites to stay up and running throughout the record-breaking traffic the tournament drove.

On the day before the opening ceremonies, the Cloud Sites team saw traffic from the infoplum application reach more than 6 million hits per hour, which is roughly 1,736 hits per second – a mind-blowing sum, especially considering it was well before the whistle blew to start the first match.

“This was by far the biggest event we have had. Cloud Sites was fundamental to the success of this event,” infoplum technical director Trevor George explained.

For this particular FIFA event, infoplum collaborated with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to serve live coverage (data and editorial) on all World Cup matches. This particular application was embedded on 161 websites, which were served to a worldwide audience in more than 20 countries and in more than 15 languages throughout the entire 32-day global soccer phenomenon. This resulted in an astonishing total of 4.1 billion – yes, billion – web requests. That’s 153 million hits per day and over 100 million pageviews.

infoplum, which was launched as Cadability in 1990, has been a loyal Cloud Sites customer since October 2008, when Cloud Sites was still called by its original name – Mosso. Well before the World Cup started and the traffic deluge began, infoplum alerted its Cloud Sites team. The Cloud Sites operations team has expertise in preparing customers and their sites for high traffic events.

“The scalability at Cloud Sites has always been there. So I was confident Cloud Sites could handle it,” George said.

For this particular event, the Cloud Sites ops team ensured enough nodes were configured in the high capacity cluster for the expected load. Then the Cloud Sites specialists configured the load balancers to have streamlined routes, including dedicated IP addresses to the high capacity cluster.

“Cloud Sites support jumped in 110 percent actively monitoring performance,” George noted. “There are actual people you could talk to, not just an email.”

Throughout the entire month, Rackspace engineers closely monitored infoplum’s environment and made any necessary adjustments to ensure the smoothest high traffic event possible.

Congratulations to our dear friends from Australia, infoplum, on an impressive high traffic event, and to the experts of the Rackspace Cloud Sites team for handling its highest super spike in Cloud Sites history.

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloud-sites-helps-infoplum-afp-handle-billions-of-fifa-world-cup-web-requests/feed/0How Cloud Sites Rises To Super Spikeshttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/how-cloud-sites-rises-to-super-spikes/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/how-cloud-sites-rises-to-super-spikes/#commentsTue, 17 Jun 2014 19:00:04 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=35885The Rackspace Cloud Sites team is no stranger to high traffic events (HTEs), and we are definitely proud every time we have the honor of managing our customers’ sites during an anticipated spike.

While surprise super spikes are a challenge we love to conquer, we advise to contact your Cloud Sites team if you know of an upcoming high traffic event. That way we can take the necessary measures ahead of time to ensure your site stands up to the spike.

Here, I will guide you through how we are preparing one of our Cloud Sites customers for an upcoming high traffic event.

1. Evaluate the potential amount of traffic the site is expected to receive.

All Cloud Sites web clusters are capable of handling very high amounts of traffic. Typically, we coordinate with the customer via conversation or answers to HTE questionnaire to determine if additional resources are necessary.

In this case, we determined that it was necessary to point the specific website to a “high capacity cluster.” This is basically a web cluster with more resources allocated to sustain much higher spikes in traffic. The resources within this cluster are not shared with any other websites aside from other HTEs.

2. A courtesy glance over the website to identify any possible bottlenecks while looking for areas to increase efficiency.

Our administrator specialists view the website’s elements to find areas that can benefit from optimization.

3. Load test

We perform load tests and benchmarks while monitoring our systems to evaluate how many hits the website can receive without slowing down or causing system issues.

This further identifies what other potential bottlenecks may have been missed during the website look over.

4. Dedicated website monitoring using MaaS (Monitoring-as a-Service)

As part of an HTE we add monitoring that checks the website every 30 seconds from six global locations: Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Hong Kong (HKG), Northern Virginia (IAD), London (LON), Chicago (ORD) and Sydney (SYD).

This provides our admin staff alerts including response times, which allows us to immediately jump on any possible issues.

And there you have it! We will always step up to the plate to ensure your business a successful high traffic event, no matter what the situation, but if you expect a super spike, we advise that you give your Cloud Sites team a heads up as an extra measure of caution.

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/how-cloud-sites-rises-to-super-spikes/feed/0Simply Backup Cloud Sites With CodeGuardhttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/simply-backup-cloud-sites-with-codeguard/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/simply-backup-cloud-sites-with-codeguard/#commentsThu, 03 Apr 2014 15:00:23 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=35242Website backups are imperative. And if you are a Rackspace Cloud Sites customer you know that backups are a hot topic. In fact, backups are the No. 1 feature you’ve requested for Cloud Sites – it has received well over 1,000 votes at feedback.rackspace.com.

Today, the wait for Cloud Sites backups is over. We have partnered with CodeGuard to provide you with a powerful and intuitive website backup solution for Cloud Sites!

What is CodeGuard?

CodeGuard is an online website backup service provider that really stands out from the crowd. It offers a simple yet powerful interface so you can have your website backups setup in minutes. In addition to backing up your site, CodeGuard monitors your website for changes and will alert you when those changes occur. This is truly an exceptional feature and can help you proactively get ahead of a potentially devastating situation should your website ever become compromised.

Another interesting feature of CodeGuard is the frequency in which backups are taken. Initially, an entire backup is taken of your website. Once the initial backup is taken, additional backups are only taken on a file-by-file basis when files are changed. This is done automatically! This means you will truly have backups of what you need while reducing the amount of overly redundant backups, which can be costly and confusing to deal with.

What about my database?

CodeGuard’s got you covered! It offers the ability to easily backup your MySQL database. You simply enter your database credentials and CodeGuard will backup your databases. These backups are critical for many of the database driven websites powered by content management solutions (CMSs) such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

What about restoring the site?

CodeGuard has got you covered there as well! In the CodeGuard repository, you can access every saved backup complete with a datestamp and detailed information on each change. In seconds after you’ve selected any clean version, your live web site can be restored to the version in the repository. CodeGuard gives you the option to download a zip of your site’s contents, restore all files to a specific backup point or select specific files to restore from backup.

Why a third-party backup provider?

One word: Specialization!

CodeGuard is a specialist in the backup arena. With the ever changing technology landscape we feel that leveraging the strengths of our partners will allow us to continue to provide our customers with the best possible service.

Ok, so what about price?

We’ve negotiated some pretty aggressive pricing for our Cloud Sites customers: CodeGuard starts at only $2.50 per month for one site with additional discounts for multiple sites!

Where do I sign up?

Signup is simple, just login to the Cloud Sites Control Panel (manage.rackspacecloud.com) and click on the CodeGuard link in the “Cloud News” section in the right-hand sidebar. You can also find additional information on CodeGuard’s website at https://codeguard.com/pages/how-it-works

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/simply-backup-cloud-sites-with-codeguard/feed/0Talking Cloud Sites, Our Web Hosting Platform: Google+ Hangout Recaphttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/talking-cloud-sites-our-web-hosting-platform-google-hangout-recap/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/talking-cloud-sites-our-web-hosting-platform-google-hangout-recap/#commentsTue, 19 Nov 2013 21:00:00 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=33903We’ve spent a lot of time talking about our different server and storage products, but this past week on the Rackspace Google+ Office Hours Hangout we talked a little bit about Cloud Sites, our platform for hosting websites and blogs. Check out some of the highlights below (linked to the point in the video that it was discussed) or watch the full video of the Hangout at the bottom of the post.

Racker Chris Farmer said that Cloud Sites is designed to work as a turnkey solution with the web clusters and storage backend already built. The team handles all the patching on the backend so you don’t have to worry about updating MySQL or Apache. Cloud Sites is particularly helpful for people who don’t need a high level of custom architecture on the backend.

In addition to being a turnkey solution, people like Cloud Sites because it is a cost effective way to host multiple, automatically scalable websites. The Cloud Sites team has built in best practices, such as load balancing the traffic, to make sure your site can scale as needed. In fact, Cloud Sites was the platform that gdgt used to serve over 55 million page requests when it live blogged Apple’s iPhone 5 event.

If you do host a blog or other site on Cloud Sites, look into offloading your images to Cloud Files. This will take advantage of our Content Delivery Network (CDN), which can speed up load times and ultimately make your customers happy. Most blogging platforms, like WordPress, have widgets that you can automatically upload images to Cloud Files.

Chris advises Cloud Sites customers expecting a high traffic event to call Rackspace support a week before the event to give the team a heads up with information (such as date and time of the event along with the expected traffic). The support team will get with the Rackspace operations team so that they can make accommodations to handle your elevated traffic.

One of the most important things to remember when running a website is that something could go wrong. Having a current backup of the site and database will allow you to get the site back up and running quickly.

This is where the Zipit Backup Utility comes in. Zipit is purpose built for Cloud Sites and Cloud Files. Whether you run a site powered by a content management system (CMS) or simply a static html site, Zipit allows you to get your site backed up with ease.

Now what about IIS sites? Thankfully, another Racker, Matthew Costello, has built an IIS version of Zipit. It offers most of the same features as the Linux version and can be downloaded at http://aspxzipitbackup.com/. Matt works in Cloud Sites as a Windows Ops Administrator II. He lives in San Antonio and enjoys coding in .NET.

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/backup-cloud-sites-to-cloud-files-with-the-zipit-backup-utility/feed/0Install Drupal And Joomla On Rackspace Cloud Sites With One Clickhttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/install-drupal-and-joomla-on-rackspace-cloud-sites-with-one-click/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/install-drupal-and-joomla-on-rackspace-cloud-sites-with-one-click/#commentsFri, 31 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=30135Want to install Drupal and Joomla quickly and with fewer headaches? Well, you’re in luck. We have a new Drupal and Joomla installer that gives you a fast and simple way to launch new pages using Rackspace Cloud Sites.

Why is this important?

Less Hassle: The installer allows you to build a website without having to set up a user, a database, ftp and the countless other things building a web business requires.

Save Time: Now you can spin up a Drupal and Joomla site for testing, staging or production purposes in a matter of minutes. With our new CMS installer on Cloud Sites, we give you back the time to focus on actually building the websites and blogs of your customers’ dreams and less time toiling with installations.

How to install Drupal/Joomla on Cloud Sites using the one-click installer

1. Add A Site: Log in to the Cloud Sites Control Panel and click “Add A Site” and follow the on-screen instructions, as you would normally do to add a site on Cloud Sites

2. Choose Your CMS: When you get to the “Additional Features” section, select it and you’ll see a new “Applications” section allowing you to select a Drupal (v7.2) or Joomla (v2.5.9 or v3.0.3) install.

3. Configurations: Fill out the Configuration details.

4. Finish: Click “Finish” and you’re done. You have successfully added a site and installed Drupal or Joomla! on Cloud Sites at the same time.

Once your CMS (Drupal or Joomla) is installed, your site will behave like any other site.

Other features include always on short tags (<?), the ability to represent integers in binary and support for callable type hint. PHP 5.4 is also deprecating register_globals, magic_quotes and safe mode.

You are welcome to migrate your site to PHP 5.4 at any time, just please ensure that your application is compatible with version 5.4 prior to your update. We intend to support both PHP 5.3 and 5.4, and we do not have plans to require customers to upgrade from PHP 5.3 to 5.4 at this time. Click here to learn how to migrate.

Improve Performance On Your .NET Sites With .NET 4.5

Key Benefits Of .NET 4.5

The new features available in .NET 4.5 can help you achieve a significant performance boost for web-server workloads. This includes a reduction (up to 35 percent) in both startup time and in the memory footprint of web hosting sites that use ASP.NET. Some of the various performance improvements for web hosting include:

You are welcome to migrate your .NET site to .NET 4.5 at any time, just please ensure that your application is compatible with version 4.5 prior to your update. We do not have plans to require customers to upgrade from .NET 4.0 to 4.5 at this time. Click here to learn how to migrate.

]]>http://www.rackspace.com/blog/boost-cloud-sites-performance-with-php-5-4-and-net-4-5-upgrades/feed/5Tips For Choosing A Managed Hosting Provider – Part Five: Apps, Control And Costhttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/tips-for-choosing-a-managed-hosting-provider-part-five-apps-control-and-cost/
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/tips-for-choosing-a-managed-hosting-provider-part-five-apps-control-and-cost/#commentsTue, 11 Dec 2012 15:00:56 +0000http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=25230You’ve found a provider that offers enough uptime and support to meet your needs. But your work’s not done yet!

Tip: Ask how many other customers are hosting your favorite application with the hosting provider

I’m surprised how many people forget to ask whether their preferred scripting language is supported by a provider, and if so, which version is supported.

Ask your prospective provider these questions:

How many other customers are using the application that you want to use — say WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla?

Do they provide Windows Server® or Linux?

Which versions of PHP, .NET, Python and Ruby does the hosting provider support?

Verifying that the provider offers the languages and apps you want will prevent a lot of heartache when you go to create your site.

Tip: Consider the level of server control you need

Do you need full server control? Or do you never want to deal with the server at all?

Some advanced developers need SSH access to customize their environments. But if you don’t want to get into the real nitty gritty on a server, then you don’t need this. (Hint: If you don’t know what SSH access is, then you don’t need full server control.)

Tip: Consider cost

Of course, you want a provider you can afford. But while price per month is definitely a factor, it should not be the deciding factor. Know your budget, get answers to the questions above and then choose the provider.

Also, don’t forget to ask what is included in the package:

How many domains can you host without paying extra?

How much bandwidth and storage is included?

Knowing this will help justify the cost of a provider who may offer better service over the long term, but costs more.

I hope you found these tips helpful in choosing the right managed hosting solution for your websites.